


wear no disguise for me

by voksen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Case Fic, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Kink Meme, Unicorns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Valjean is a unicorn, Javert is a Hunter, and there's less crack than you'd think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wear no disguise for me

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the anons on the meme who wanted more, my betas, and all the people who put up with the weirdest conversations while I was writing unicorn casefic at 3 am.

When the report comes in that a young girl has been found dead near Montreuil, impaled cleanly through the chest, Inspector Javert leaps on the case immediately, with almost unseemly fervor. It had been ten years, perhaps a little longer, since any news had been heard that carried even the slightest indication that the creature was still alive, and his colleagues had long since dismissed it - killed in exile, perhaps, or sickened and died, or only ever existed in rumor. This last, despite Javert's vehement arguments for its presence: he has seen its tracks, a tuft of hair caught in a fence - they agree with him to his face, but he sees their sideways looks at each other and grows sullen and eventually stops discussing it at all.

And now -! Javert had always known that this day would come - had prepared for it relentlessly amidst the everyday tasks - and so now, today, he is ready at a moment's notice. Musket. Pistols. A chain net. He is ready for any eventuality, any possibility. There will be no more escapes from justice.

He leaves the others to deal with the nest of common imps (they are surely capable of that much without him) and sets out at once; the coach is too slow, but he forces himself to patience, goes over carefully memorized strategies, though their details will be of little use to him. There are those who attempt to capture beasts alive, to sell them into slavery or butcher them carefully for their parts, but not he: a death for a death. It is only just.

Javert arrives at Montreuil late in the evening and asks about for information on the dead girl and meets an equally dead end with all whom he questions; when he turns his inquiries to the more general subject of odd happenings in the area, however, he meets with success. An apple orchard a short distance away in the countryside is blooming out of season, he is informed. Does M'sieur Javert think it might be a witch's work?

He leaves for the orchard without deigning to answer the question.

When he reaches it, there can be no doubt that he has at last hunted his long-elusive quarry to ground. Apple blossoms cover the trees in thick blankets, a mockery of the snow that still lies thick on the ground, and Javert stares at them accusingly. They rustle softly in a sudden perfumed breeze - good: he is downwind. He readies his musket and strides into the orchard, fearless.

The clouds break above him as he searches, driven perhaps by the same wind that stirs the trees, and the night grows brighter by the grace of the moon and stars. And it is so, in silver shadow, that Javert catches his first full sight of the unicorn.

In the books, the histories and treatises and strategy manuals hunters dote on, there are of course many illustrations and descriptions of such beasts: a stag argent, with a single antler, most commonly. They are at once made irrelevant - Javert would as soon call the Tarasque a newt's brother as compare the unicorn to a deer. 

The color is almost correct, but Javert had not known it would _shine_ so, like a star half-fallen and left poised on earth. He had not known that rather than a deer's slimness, it would be powerfully burled like a warhorse, with a long lion's tail and a thin twist of silver beard. The horn - never an antler - shimmers like carved pearl as the unicorn dips its head, pawing at the drift of snow beneath a tree.

Javert - Inspector Javert, with some dozen harpies, a round handful of guivre whelps, innumerable imp clutches and even two loup-garou to his credit - drops his musket. He has never seen anything so - so -

The unicorn startles, whips around, and for a moment their eyes meet and Javert's soul takes flight. It takes one step forwards - towards him - and Javert cannot hold. His eyes fall: he sees for the first time an ugly iron chain clasped around the unicorn's neck, so tightly that it bites into the fur-and-flesh, and his mouth goes dry.

As if he had cast some sort of spell on it with his gaze (impossible!) it, freed, rears back, spins, and gallops away at an impossible speed, with impossible grace. Javert follows his musket to the ground, landing heavily in the snow. _Impossible._ He has seen it, met it - and deliberately let it escape to kill again. He! Javert!

And yet - and yet. The chain about its neck haunts him - and he had not even locked it. To shoot it... somehow he knows that would have been a sin from which no penance could ever unburden him. If there is such a thing as a Godly creature, if he is not blaspheming simply by the thought, it is the unicorn.

He kneels in the snow for a long while, until he is shivering from the cold as well as the war raging in his mind. There is no way to reconcile what he has done with his duty; it is as if he murdered the girl himself - and the blame for all the future victims will be on him as well, their blood on his hands. It is better that theirs should be the only - or not, perhaps, the _only_ -

Javert is reaching for his pistol when a breath of sweet warm air behind him disturbs the bit of hair that has slipped from his queue; insensible, is raising it to his temple when, gently, the unicorn knocks it from his hand then lays its horn against his shoulder.

So this is how it will end: not by his own hand, but spitted on the horn of the beast he could not kill, another virgin sacrifice. There's a sort of correctness to it, Javert thinks, that this should be his fate. It is justice, but not human justice; the law of God rather than the law of man.

Behind him, the unicorn steps forward and puts its head into Javert's still-raised hand: its velvet cheek fits perfectly into his palm. When he turns to look, incredulous, their eyes meet again and it is again more than he can bear. He snatches his hand away and stands, stumbling backwards a few paces. Perhaps - perhaps it needs a running start. Its thick, powerful neck, corded with muscle, gives that the lie; Javert is used to assessing danger, knows that its terrible strength would have been more than enough to drive the horn through his thick wool greatcoat, into his back, into his heart. And yet it had not, and he does not know why. Already brought to the brink by his unconscionable dereliction of duty, he stands, waiting, because there is nothing else he can do.

The unicorn raises its head; for an instant its horn orients on Javert's chest and he holds his breath, certain death is imminent - and then the moment is past and it is watching him as he is watching it. Not willing to risk its eyes a third time, he keeps his gaze low, staring at the iron banded around its neck, the clumsy hook-and-latch that locks it in place. It comes to him gradually, terribly, that it would be very easy for him to unlatch it, to free the creature in a more physical way, to touch it again and feel that broad thick shoulder under the flat of his hand. 

Perhaps they are both bewitched, because it does not flee from him again as he draws near, though it shudders slightly, like a horse shaking a fly, when his gloved fingers brush over the too-hot, swollen flesh pinched beneath the chain. "I must be mad," Javert says to himself, and indeed the words are so self-evidently true that speaking them aloud carries far less sting than it ought. He bends to inspect the lock more closely. It is drawn so tight by the width of the muscle it encircles that the rough, curved prong that holds it shut digs deep into the unicorn's hide, nearly to the point of piercing it completely, and Javert sees no way of undoing it that will not require at least a little pain.

If he hurts it, surely it will cease delaying, finally kill him, and end this freefall he finds himself caught in. He steps slightly to one side, bracing himself, takes hold of the protruding link, and _pulls_ with all his strength. The unicorn stands fast, enduring silently. When the chain finally pops free and slides off its neck to hang loose in Javert's hands, it looses a shuddering sort of breath almost like a sigh and turns its nose into Javert's breast. The horn again rests at his shoulder, pressing the collar of his coat firmly against his neck in a way that ought to feel threatening but only makes him sickly aware that he is still, somehow, unaccountably, alive - and that that seems unlikely to change in the near future.

"Well," he says, this time addressing the unicorn. Its ear flicks slightly: listening to him. Really, it is some strange irony that, for the first time in memory, he has _questions_ beyond the immediacies of investigation, and the only one who might hold answers cannot speak. 

The chain has wet smears on it from where he had pulled too hard, luminescent pale blue instead of red or black, and he tries not to think about them as he tosses it to the ground with a clanking rattle. "What do you want of me?" he asks the unicorn, even though he knows there can be no answer. _Why did you stop me?_ If it is true (for everything is shattered and doubtful, now) that unicorns feed on purity, surely it must be satisfied with having stolen his convictions, broken his word, stranded him in a strange new world with no truth in it except itself, holy and monstrous. What else does he have to give?

And then the unicorn steps away and he feels the loss of its touch like a blow, like the shock of tumbling into icy water, leaving him breathless and bereft of what little calm had crept back into his nerves while he had been touching it. If it leaves him now - but no. It stops a length away, turns, looks back at him, waits even as he had waited.

Javert bends to pick up his pistol; if the thought of turning it once more on himself - or even on the unicorn - crosses his fevered mind, it is gone as quickly as it comes. Pistol holstered, musket slung over his back, he turns back. The unicorn is still waiting, with seemingly infinite patience; and, one foot in front of the other, Javert follows it.

By the time they emerge from the apple orchard, the clouds have drawn shut again, thick and dark with the promise of rain to come, and his hand rests on the unicorn's back, just behind the withers - as it has done since he tripped over a stray root and caught himself there. In the darkness, even without starlight, the unicorn still glimmers faintly: not enough to see the road, but enough that _it_ is plainly visible, a ghostly figure with Javert's arm an ugly shadow across it.

The road leads back to Montreuil, but Javert does not know where they are going. The unicorn has not, so far, seemed inclined to kill him; beyond that, its motives are no clearer than his own: where are they bound? what will he do when this is over? how can he possibly return - to Montreuil, to Paris, to his work, to his life?

But the unicorn walks on, and so Javert perforce walks with it, side by side but feeling as if it tows him through uncertain waters. He hopes there is land on the other side, but it doesn't seem likely.

They are halfway to the town when Javert hears the creak of wheels and plodding footfalls in the dark, coming towards them. The unicorn walks implacably on. "I cannot," he tells it, and swallows down the rest of the sentence - _be seen here - like this - with you_ \- as yellow light spills around a sharp corner in the road ahead and a small cart heaves into view, pulled by a hulking, clumsy plowhorse. (He will never be able to look at a horse through the same eyes, Javert thinks distantly.)

There's a certain amount of scuffling in the cart when the two youths inside see him in their lanterns' light and shove at each other slightly in their attempts to get a better look. Javert, caught out, stands calmly, shoulders back, hand clenched in a twist of mane. There is nothing to be done.

They pull the cart to a halt a few meters away; so close, he recognizes the taller one as one of the many he'd asked a few hours and a lifetime ago about the dead girl - and both of them as boys where they're not supposed to be, sneaking around doing minor things of no consequence that they are nonetheless not supposed to do. Out after curfew for a thrill, no doubt, risking the danger that surely must lurk where an Inspector goes. 

They have no idea.

"Ah, Inspector..." the shorter one starts, having won - or perhaps lost - the small elbowing fight. ( _"Javert,"_ the taller whispers loudly, the slur and volume making it quite clear where he had found his courage.) "...Javert. Is all well?"

Javert stares. He is standing here, in the middle of the road, holding onto a unicorn. (He takes a sideways look, to be sure this is the truth, as really, can he be certain of anything at this moment? But it is.) Eventually, when the silence has stretched on just long enough to be intolerably awkward and neither of them have mentioned the... the _situation_ , he says "Yes," because it is possible that it could be worse, so it is well enough.

"It's a fine horse you've got there," the lad continues gamely, and Javert realizes two things in quick succession: one, he's being sounded out in a desperately bad imitation of his own investigations, and two, somehow, they cannot see the unicorn for what it is.

"Ask him if it's a _Mallet!_ " the drunk one says. "Inspector! is--"

His friend cuts him off with a shove that nearly has him tipping out of the cart. "Idiot! Do you see a saddle? A bridle? No? It's only a horse."

"Sorry," he mumbles, staggering upright again, and eyes Javert unsteadily again. "No... no bridle. Oh! M'-m'sieur, I'll sell you this one for just a few sou..." He pulls a tatty-looking length of leather from the cart and waves it in Javert's direction.

Javert's lips thin. He is certain they are not acting - no one could see the unicorn in its full splendor and be so unaffected - and so, clearly, the unicorn must have done something to disguise itself. But it still feels as if they mock him with their idiotic incomprehension and chatter. "I think not," he says. To his surprise, his voice comes out steady: flat with sarcasm, but perfectly under control. There is no trace of uncertainty, no embarrassing, unexplainable quaver, no hint that not an hour ago he was holding his own pistol to his head. "Now -" he fixes the less-drunken one with a pointed stare - "unless you have misplaced a _horse_ to go with that bridle, you should go. Stay inside and pretend you have some sense. Do you think I came here for nothing?"

There's an audible gulp as the implications of his words sink in: he is hunting, here, near them, and has not yet found what he seeks: it is still at large. The tall one manages an awkward tip of his cap before grabbing up the reins and starting the plowhorse along again; it lumbers off at a much faster clip than it had come, and Javert watches the lanterns fade into the distance.

When it is gone, he turns to give the unicorn an accusing glare. Not that he can think of any way it might have warned him, to be sure, but - _God above_ , this is absurd. He shakes his head. "If you are going to act the horse," he tells it, setting down his pack in the road and half-kneeling to unbuckle it, "we'll need a better explanation than that for why you walk to heel like a hound." His hands pause on the straps. "... _Can_ you appear as a hound?"

The disbelieving snort it gives him can only mean 'No.' It's not much, but it's closer to communication than they've gotten so far, even if it fails to explain why the unicorn did not simply disguise itself from _him_ and save them both the trouble. Javert shakes his head and opens the pack, pulling out a handful of chain. The long end chains, intended for drawing up the snare around its victim or retrieving it after a missed cast, can be removed and altered to shape the net to different configurations for use on different creatures. He feels completely sure, however, that no one in the history of the prefecture has ever attempted to make a _unicorn halter_ out of it.

He unclips the chains from the net and stuffs the rest of it back, rebuckling the pack and then glancing up to see that the unicorn is watching him warily. The chain - of course. He should have thought. But he has nothing else suitable, and if they are going to go about undercover for whatever the unicorn's purpose is, Javert thinks it had better be a disguise that will actually work.

"I won't make it as tight as the other," he says. Another of those discomfiting, uneasy moments strikes him (he's explaining himself to a beast - even if it can understand him) and he clears his throat. 

The unicorn regards him for a moment longer, then bows its head, offering itself to be chained again. Javert, with a mighty effort, represses the strange feeling of mutual vulnerability this drags out of him and steps around in front of it. He has no particular skill in harness making, nor has he paid much attention to the finished tack of horses he's seen being led about, but - needs must. Eventually, after several false starts and the regrettable sacrifice of his cravat for a noseband, he manages to twist together a halter that doesn't look _completely_ like the amateur effort it is and does not fall completely to pieces when he tugs gently at the dangling line.

When he steps back, finished, the unicorn raises its head and shakes itself vigorously: the chain jangles but stays put, and Javert takes hold of the lead again. In the histories, it is often suggested that a maiden might capture a unicorn - for whatever purpose - by waiting for it to approach her, then locking a golden bridle about it while its head is in her lap. It is a ridiculous comparison - the chain is not golden and he is hardly a _maid_ \- and so he does his best to thrust it from his mind.

That settled, Javert adjusts his coat, drawing it closer round his neck to conceal the absence of his cravat, retrieves his satchel, and they are off again. It takes them a few minutes to find their pace: with the lead in Javert's fist instead of his hand on its back, it's not as easy to conceal the fact that it's the unicorn who knows where they're going, the beast leading the man instead of the reverse as it should be. But by the time the faint lights of Montreuil are visible, they've worked it out, more or less, and are again walking side by side.

The unicorn leads him around the edge, skirting just beyond the outlying houses - at least it has _some_ feel for subtlety - and then heads for the seediest part of the docks, forcing Javert to reassess that judgment. What can it be thinking? What are they doing?

It is well after midnight and the streets, while no longer full, are far from empty. Drunken dockhands and sailors stumble in and out of bars; prostitutes line the alleys, calling back and forth with the men, blatantly negotiating their services. Some heads turn to look at them as they pass; he imagines the unicorn makes a fine figure of a horse, and his uniform is distinctive. But - the people look away again indifferently moments later, so he assumes the unicorn's disguise is still holding, uneasy though it makes him to rely on fae magic that he cannot even see for himself.

"This is hardly a place for you," he mutters under his breath as they skirt around a drunk passed out on the street. The unicorn snorts and tosses its head, rattling the chain he holds as if to _reprimand_ him, and Javert stops and stares at it. Surely there can be no purity here, in this slum: he sees only depravity on every side, sin and grime with the unicorn in the middle of it all, as out of place as a pearl cast in mud.

It tugs at the lead insistently and reluctantly he follows again. To his horror it leads him to the mouth of a dark alcove where a whore in a mouse-gray dress stands and then _halts_ there, leaving Javert staring blankly at the woman.

"M'sieur," she lisps uncertainly: beneath her painted lips, he sees, there is a blank space where teeth should be. "Can I... help you?"

The unicorn nickers softly as she speaks. When she glances at it, her mouth parts slightly, eyes glassing over, and reaches out as if to stroke its nose, but it jerks away sharply, yanking at the lead, before her fingers can touch it. She snatches her hand back, blinking as if coming out of a daze, and Javert looks between them, his confusion far from abated. What had it done to her? And - what could a unicorn want of a whore?

In a way, it is his duty to find out. He cannot _leave_ the unicorn here, after all - Lord only knows what it might do. So: there is work to be done. The thought settles him, calms him, gives him a focus he's sorely missed, a chance for solid earth beneath his boots once more.

He is thrust into the investigation in the middle, but he will start his questioning from the beginning, with what called him to Montreuil in the first place - even though, in the unicorn, that is a mystery that _should_ by rights already be solved. 

"A few days past, a girl was killed -" the unicorn shifts uneasily at his side and Javert seizes on this as a clue, but continues without a break, "- a few miles to the east of here. Have you any information?"

The whore's eyes widen as he speaks; she presses her hands to her face and he hopes wearily that she is not going to cry. "A girl?" she falters. 

This is not the reaction of someone who knows nothing, of someone unaffected, and Javert feels his suspicions rise. She knows something; something is going on here, between whore and unicorn, and by God he will find out what. 

She's staring at him now, genuine fear creeping into her eyes. "Please, m'sieur," she says, "what girl? What was her name? How - how old was she?"

Javert does not know the dead girl's name; that's a matter for a different department and he has no idea whether or not they had managed to identify her. But he had read the full report of her discovery several times over and added the relevant details to his own file; the other is a question he can answer. "A young woman," he says, watching her closely. "Perhaps fifteen."

Her shoulders slump as she lets out the breath she'd been holding, relief written clearly all over her face and threaded through her voice: "Thank God," she whispers. "My Cosette..."

The unicorn picks this moment to nudge Javert's shoulder with somewhat excessive force, nearly knocking him forwards off his feet. He shoves back at it as subtly as he can. _I know my business!_ he wants to growl at it, but he already cuts a strange enough figure without being seen arguing with a horse in public.

"What's this?" he asks her instead.

She bows her head slightly, turning away as if to hide her face behind a curtain of hair that isn't there. "My child, m'sieur," she says. "My daughter - Cosette. She stays at the inn at Montfermeil - they say she is ill - I was afraid something might have happened..."

This time Javert steps out of the way before the unicorn can shove him again; it noses air and snorts at him. "Which inn?"

"The Sergeant at Waterloo. It - it is run by the Thenardiers," she says, and now she's looking at him with those wide, pleading eyes again. "M'sieur, _has_ something happened? Is she safe? Please, I must know."

An ill child, fostered by innkeepers, is not something that would normally concern Javert in the slightest, but as the unicorn is being remarkably unsubtle about its interest, it is quite clear that there is more to the story than the surface indicates. It bears further - personal - investigation. "And your name?"

"Fantine."

Javert reaches into his pocketbook and pulls out a few francs, shoving them roughly into her hands when she does not immediately reach out to take them. "Go home," he says. "If there _is_ something wrong, I may need to speak with you again - _without_ the bother of turning out every alley and bedsit to find you."

She blushes - _blushes_ \- but her hands clench into little white fists about his money. She nods in what's almost an acceptable curtsey, mumbles something he assumes is her address, and flees.

Javert turns his glare on the unicorn, but it is watching Fantine, its eyes and ears following her until she rounds the corner of the street and is gone. Then it turns away, swinging its nose to tug him along - and rather than get into a pulling fight in the middle of the street he goes along.

They go straight back out of the town, and as soon as they are quit of it he digs his heels in, pulling the unicorn to a stop as well. "Enough!" he says. " _Enough._ What is this? Do you expect me to walk to Montfermeil in the middle of the night - and for what? A whore's child?" 

The unicorn jerks back away from him, flicking its head and yanking the chain out of Javert's fingers with a rough burn. But, instead of galloping off as he more-than-half expects, it turns away, giving him its broad side and, when he looks at it in incomprehension, sidesteps to bump into him insistently. Then, slowly, it lies down in front of him and gives him a very pointed look.

Javert gets on.

It leaps to its feet in a graceful bound as if his not-inconsiderable weight is nothing to it at all. He grabs at its mane again to steady himself - he has ridden before, of course, but he's no cavalryman - and then in a blink they are whipping down the road. The unicorn is faster than any horse he's ever seen, much less ridden, but its gait at a gallop is more like a deer's, a sort of bounding headlong dash. It is like being on a too-small ship tossed in a vengeful storm. He presses his knees into its sides for lack of stirrups and keeps his head down, holding on as tight as he can and wishing he didn't feel quite so much like he was going to vomit. It begins to rain within minutes, a cold wet drizzle that soaks down the back of his greatcoat and threatens to become sleet. Javert closes his eyes, but it doesn't help much.

When, after a while, he hears the hoofbeats change - softer now, muffled instead of ringing out like bells - he pries them open again and sees that the unicorn has left the hard-packed road for the grass; the countryside blurs past at an incredible speed, in a rush of wet field and stone fences, the latter of which the unicorn jumps as if they were nothing, so smoothly that Javert can't feel a break in its stride at all.

They are headed steadily southwards, bearing a bit east, and towns begin to flash by with increasing regularity; the unicorn's pace never slacks even as the minutes stretch on until he can no longer count them. It is a far more direct route than the coach Javert had earlier taken to Montreuil and - when he looks, in between long bouts of simply holding on - he does not recognize the countryside. As they crest a hill and leap the fence atop it, he sees the first blush of sunlight turning the slowly-fading stormclouds a bloody silver. And then, suddenly, they are out of the fields and into a small wood, the unicorn flickering over logs and between trees as easily as it had covered the open ground before. Javert flattens himself down close to its neck - and prays that this misadventure won't be the breaking of his _own_. "Slow down!" he says to it, but the wind of their passing rips the words from his mouth so that he cannot even hear himself, and so the unicorn does not slow - until, suddenly, it does.

The abruptness of the change tears Javert's tired fists from its mane, leaves him sitting half-on its neck - and then, with what seems like studied deliberance, it swerves into a thicket of branches that catch at Javert and pull him clean from its back to land with a thud in a thick pile of snow and bracken.

And _now_ the unicorn canters on, leaving Javert staring after it, mouth open in disbelief. Why bring him so far just to leave him here, in the middle of nowhere? He shuts his mouth with a click, climbing grimly to his feet despite the ache in his thighs from the long ride and brushing the snow from his coat and pants. No matter the reason, he will not let it stand like this; if it is a test, by God it is one that is not yet over.

The unicorn's tracks are clear in the snow and he sets out following them at once. He has been walking less than a minute when he stops, tilts his head, listens: a woman - or a girl - is singing somewhere just ahead; he cannot quite catch the words, but the direction is clear: the way the unicorn had gone.

A strange chill descends on him, utterly alien to the mundane cold of snow-and-slush, what he has regained of his equilibrium since the beginning of the night cracking again, for why else would the unicorn throw him if it did not intend harm? By speaking with the whore, finding her child - her no doubt yet virginal child, if she sent it away to be fostered - has he done the unicorn's hunting _for_ it - is it a killer after all?

Javert stumbles into a run, slipping on the ice underfoot and nearly falling as he races along the trail. The girl is still singing - he may not be too late -

He catches himself up just before he would have stumbled into a clearing. There's an old well - and by it, a little girl, no more than five or six, doing her best to haul up a bucket of water as she sings to herself. 

The girl looks up when she hears him, her song faltering to a stop, and then the unicorn steps into the clearing: it must have circled around just out of Javert's sight. The halter is gone, no doubt scraped off on a tree as soon as it had lost him. He fumbles for his pistol, draws it for the second time that night -

And then her wandering eyes spot the unicorn. She does not see a horse - it is quite obvious - and she suddenly looks the happiest child Javert has ever seen despite her thin face and ragged dress. As he opens his mouth to call a warning, she darts forward to the unicorn and throws her arms up about its neck.

"Jean!" she gasps, half whisper, half happy cry, as if she cannot quite muffle her joy. "You're all right!"

" _...Jean?_ " Javert echoes incredulously.

She turns to look in his direction, scanning the wood - but, he notices, keeping one hand on the unicorn, as if she doesn't wish to stop touching it. He understands the feeling all too well for his own comfort. Unbelievable as it is, there is apparently no immediate danger; he replaces his pistol and steps out into the clearing.

The girl blinks at him silently, staring at him as wide-eyed as her mother had - for surely this is Fantine's child, he thinks; why else would the unicorn have come to her? She seems too surprised by his sudden appearance to say anything, so he speaks instead - not of investigations as he should, but the thing that's clinging, unshakably, to the top of his mind: "Why do you call it Jean?"

She looks up at the unicorn and smiles sweetly at it, seeming to draw reassurance from the act; it lowers its nose to nuzzle at her hair, looking far more affectionate than lethal. "I don't know," she says, turning back to him, "he just looks like a Jean - don't you think, m'sieur?"

The thought had not exactly crossed Javert's mind, no.

But, that...resolved, he drags himself forcefully back to task. "You are Cosette," he says, "are you not? Your mother's name is Fantine?"

Cosette nods.

And here is a catch: she does not look particularly sickly to Javert - not that he is a physician - and here she is, in the woods hauling water at dawn in a tattered dress ill-suited for the cold and wet... or for much of anything at all. He does not think much more of Fantine's choice of homes than her choice of professions - but he also scents something darker than simple grift going on here. 

"Your mother is... concerned about you," he says, perhaps too abruptly, as she shrinks back against the unicorn's bulk and _blinks_ at him again, damn it. "Have you been ill?"

She shakes her head. "No, m'sieur. I..." The brave smile she puts on is transparent enough to fool no one: "I am all right."

Javert nods as if he accepts it. What exactly he can do about this is not immediately clear, beyond telling Fantine that her money is going astray when he returns to the town; it is not _illegal_ to send a girl to fetch water or to give her shoddy clothing, after all. But, he thinks, he will do that much, at least - 

"Cosette!" another young voice calls, "What's _taking_ so long? Are you--"

The girl who appears following the words is of an age with Cosette, Javert judges, but beyond that all is different: there are no dirty smudges or flyaway tangles on _her,_ no rags but a pretty new dress and a thick wool cloak to warm her. This will be the innkeepers' child, no doubt; and no doubt this is where Fantine's money finds its home.

She stands frozen, goggling at the unicorn as it stands behind Cosette: no familiarity there, no invented names: just blank wonder and half-enamored awe. Javert thinks uncomfortably that he might have looked much the same back in the apple orchard outside Montreuil.

He shifts; the wet snow crunches underfoot and the new girl tears her eyes from the unicorn to look at his far less interesting figure. Her reaction is not at all what he expects: she gasps, then runs for the unicorn as Cosette had, but stops short of embracing it, instead placing herself between it and Javert, arms flung wide as if to hold back the tide. 

"You can't help them kill him!" she orders him imperiously, chin up, eyes blazing with all the might and certainty of a child who's always gotten her own way. "I won't let you!"

"Kill him?" Cosette says uncertainly.

"Shut up! You're too stupid to know an Inspector when you see one, so just shut up!"

"I don't intend to kill it," Javert cuts in sharply, "Mademoiselle Thenardier."

His guess strikes home: startled, the innkeepers' girl drops her arms, darting a brief glance at Cosette beside her as if to accuse her of having informed. But, on seeing Cosette looks just as surprised as she, her eyes quickly find Javert again. "How did you know my name?" she challenges.

"It is my business to know things," Javert replies, which is true enough - even if he has been falling further and further from his beat since the moment he laid eyes on the unicorn. "Who else are you protecting it from?" he presses. "Who do you accuse me of _helping_?"

Her face closes up like a steel trap: he has touched a nerve indeed, a close and powerful one - and that, combined with Cosette's pitiful figure and what it tells him of the Thenardiers, that is enough.

Here it is: the Thenardiers are not so rich that they can afford to clothe their servants well; a unicorn caught and sold (his mind boggles briefly at the value: the horn alone, even if they could not take it live, would be more than any innkeeper could expect to see in ten lifetimes' honest work) would be worth quite a bit of risk. Cosette has seen the unicorn before. The dead virgin was found not so far from here, and Javert - Javert finds himself finally no longer able to believe that the unicorn was to blame; not for this death nor for the ones ten years ago over which he'd first taken up the hunt. Such is the substance of the case; this is the viper hidden in the grass which he had sensed earlier; these innkeepers are not only thieves, but murderers.

The unicorn bends its head again, but this time it touches its muzzle gently to the Thenardier girl's head, whuffling into her perfectly-coiffed hair, then presses its nose against her cheek.

Her resistance melts beneath the touch. "My parents," she mumbles, confirming what Javert already knows.

Beside her, Cosette is beginning to shiver in the cold wet morning. Javert unbuttons his coat, walks to the three of them - two little girls huddled before the great unicorn - and swings it around the whore's daughter. It is comically too large for her, enveloping her more like a quilt than a cloak. Her whisper of "thank you, m'sieur," is barely audible.

The other one watches this, a strange look in her eye, but by the time he straightens to look down at her, it is gone and she is only wary again. 

Javert does not often deal personally with the law that governs human killers, but he knows it well regardless; there are more strictures here than in his usual line of work. There will be a court instead of a hunt; he will need more evidence to bring justice to bear here than the logic he has - logic that would have been enough proof to condemn a fae.

For the first time in his life, Javert wonders if that is _fair_.

But the middle of an investigation is no time for philosophizing on dangerous ideas. "Now," he says. "If you know I'm an Inspector, you must know something about the law."

She's avoiding his eyes and nods instead of answering aloud. No doubt she thinks she's being cagey, but there's guilt writ all over her. Javert finds himself hoping that it is only the guilt of knowledge and that she is not - despite her age - involved more deeply in this. 

"Your parents are guilty of more than attempted poaching," he says, making it clear with his tone that it is not a question, "aren't they. What happened to the girl?"

She stands frozen - and then, gently, the unicorn nudges her shoulder. ( _Very_ gently, Javert notes, remembering sourly how it had almost knocked _him_ off his feet.)

When she doesn't answer despite its prompting, Javert steps in again. "Those who break the law must be stopped - arrested - so that those who do not," his gaze flicks from her to the unicorn and back, "can live in safety. You know that much."

Thenardier swallows, bites her lip. Javert waits: she will choose one way or another which path she'll follow and what she'll make of herself - a choice made _for_ her will amount to nothing. She must raise herself to the law, or fall, on her own.

"They killed 'em," she says finally, and then the sordid, miserable story all at last spills out: a young woman and her father, traveling across the country on the way to her wedding; Cosette, excited and happy to the point of singing as she worked of having seen a unicorn nearby. (Cosette, still huddled in Javert's coat, looks suddenly guilty herself.) Thenardier, pere, overhearing and taking the bride out as bait to search for the unicorn; his daughter following in stealth, wanting to see the unicorn for herself as it wasn't right that Cosette should have something she did not.

The accidental (or perhaps not so accidental, Javert suspects, but does not interrupt the tale) death of the young lady at the point of the bayonet on the innkeeper's old musket, the subsequent theft of her dowry - the innkeeper's wife smothering the bride's father that night as he still slept, so that he could not file a report on the disappearance of his daughter nor accuse them of the crime.

The daughter's body, left where it lay; the father's, dragged out behind the inn and hidden in the refuse heap.

"Enough," says Javert, finally. "You've done well." If the corpse is still there, together with the daughter's testimony and his own, it will be enough to convict them both. She nods a bit jerkily, but there are no tears in her eyes. It's a strength Javert can appreciate; she may be an orphan soon, but he thinks she will survive if she can hold this new course.

Behind the girls, the unicorn suddenly jerks to attention, ears swiveling to the little dirt path that Javert assumes must lead back to the inn - and then it bounds off into woods with a single great leap that makes his stomach cringe in memory. 

"Eponine? _Cosette!_ " A woman's voice - coarse and sneering. The girls have been missing long enough that even a caretaker as apparently lax as theirs comes looking, it seems. Eponine - the Thenardier girl - looks torn between worry and shame; Cosette shrinks down as if she's hoping to altogether disappear. The woman yells again before Javert hears heavy footsteps coming down the path, and suddenly their time is very short. He retrieves his coat from Cosette, slinging it quickly back over his own shoulders. The more official he looks, the more likely he will not have to resort to violence - though he suspects the chance of that is small; accused murderers are not likely to come peacefully.

The unicorn had gotten itself away; perhaps its magic is wearing thin - or perhaps there may be danger. The girls yet remain. "Go," he tells them in a low voice. "Stay close to the edge of the woods."

Eponine stares at him, but Cosette nods and starts off - reaching back to take the other girl's hand gently when she doesn't follow immediately. "Jean will help us," she whispers, and then they are gone and Javert stands alone in front of the well, his coat hanging open to display his uniform, Cosette's empty bucket abandoned at his feet.

Madame Thenardier puffs in, red-faced with anger and the cold and clearly more than ready to scold her daughter and like as not beat her servant - only to be confronted by Inspector Javert instead of two errant girls. 

He smiles grimly at her shock: it is the vicious, righteous satisfaction of another beast brought to bay - never mind that this one walks on two legs and wears a human mask. "Madame," he says. "Two counts of murder, two of robbery, one attempted poaching, and failure to report a known, wanted, and dangerous fae with a prior record. You will come with me."

She blanches beneath the red of exertion, but regroups almost soon enough. "Why," she says, "M'sieur Inspector, I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Tell it to the courts," Javert says, and walks forward.

And suddenly there is a knife in Mme Thenardier's hand, produced from somewhere in her skirts, a small iron one as anyone who lived near a faewood might carry, but long enough for the purpose and sharp enough that it slashes the flaring edge of Javert's coat open with ease as he ducks backwards and reaches for his pistol.

She follows, clearly intending to stop him or kill him before he can draw it - but a sudden ghastly shriek from the woods checks her movement just enough that he can sidestep the blow before the knife bites skin instead of cloth. With a resounding crack, he brings the butt of the pistol down onto her temple; she crumples unceremoniously to the ground and Javert kicks the knife out of her hand and into a snowdrift.

There's a sudden rattle and Javert looks up, then laughs, a harsh bark: the unicorn is back, holding the sad remains of the halter he'd made - now mostly fallen apart - between its teeth.

He takes it, rebuilds his net quickly and snares the unconscious woman securely in it; what will do for one sort of monster will surely do for another. By the time he is done, the girls have crept back out of the cover of the woods, drawn again to the unicorn. Eponine stares down at her mother, bound at Javert's feet, with a long, queer look, but says nothing.

"What will we do now, m'sieur?" Cosette asks.

He bends, hefts Thenardier's body up into his arms, and begins to walk the path back to the inn. The girls - and the unicorn - follow him at once, staying close, and Javert finds that he seems, at last, to be actually in charge of this... unusual investigation. "I will take them to Paris," he says shortly; Madame Thenardier is not particularly light, and it has been a very long and very trying day. "They will answer to the courts." If he does not say that they will lose their heads for what they've done, it is only because he does not want to spare the breath in discussing it.

They go in silence after that until the woods fade out around them and the inn comes into view; he sets down his burden and stretches, hiding a wince. "Your father is inside?" he asks Eponine.

She nods. "Still sleeping..."

If the case had been assigned to the proper department they would have sent at least a handful of soldiers along with the Inspector assigned to bring in two armed and dangerous murderers; Javert has only himself, two little girls, and a unicorn. He looks at it; it looks back steadily. "Make sure she doesn't get away," he tells it, lashes the long chain about the closest sapling to hold the woman should she wake while he is gone, and goes inside.

The inn is filthy, the common room's floor sticky beneath his boots with spilled wine and no doubt worse, rough-hewn tables stained and scarred. Javert stays only long enough to determine that M. Thenardier is nowhere to be seen. Nor is he in the kitchen, where a foul-smelling pot of stew is already (or perhaps still) boiling over the hearth. The kitchen door leads out into a midden which smells, if possible, even worse. Javert takes up a half-broken rake and shoves at the pile of garbage, working quickly; time is short.

Finally, underneath a week's worth of slime and putrescence, he uncovers a half-rotten hand sticking up from the rest. They will have to send someone else to give the man a proper burial; Javert tosses the rake atop the pile and turns away. There is a small, half-collapsed stable not far away; he looks into it briefly for the sake of being thorough. A bony, tired-looking old nag looks back at him from the far side of a ramshackle cart filled with dusty, ancient hay apparently too unappetizing to eat. There are old tools propped against the walls, mostly broken or rusted to the point of being worthless, a shabby harness for the cart, and some dirty rope. He takes the latter, as he doubts M. Thenardier will go more easily than his wife, and returns to the inn.

It is still silent - no doubt the master of the house was up late into the night serving guests and Eponine had been correct. With nowhere else to look, Javert goes to investigate the sleeping rooms; he listens at each door and hears noise behind only one of them. No guests staying overnight, it seems; he might think the townsfolk had more sense than most if the evidence that people still drank and ate here had not been all over the floor. 

He swings the door slowly open, lifting it slightly as he does to silence the squeak of undoubtedly rusty hinges. Thenardier is snoring away inside, sprawled out messily over an unmade bed. Javert looks quickly about the room: a solid candlestick, guttered out on the sideboard near the bed, a musket - likely the one he'd killed the girl with - hanging on a far wall, but no other potential weapons. 

Javert crosses the room silently and plants his knee directly in the small of his back, pinning him to the bed even as he wakes up with a squawk and a struggle. "Thenardier," he says, not bothering to keep the relish from his voice, "you're under arrest."

He binds him with the rope he'd found in the stables; groggy and still more than half-drunk, the man fights back far less than his wife had after all and Javert is able to frogmarch him out of his inn without the trouble of knocking him out and carrying him.

The unicorn is still standing guard and Mme. Thenardier is only beginning to stir. Javert ties the man to the same tree as his wife and turns to the girls. "Go and collect whatever you want to bring with you," he says. He hadn't given much thought to what he was going to do with them - but after being in that inn, it is quite obvious that it is impossible to leave them there, nor can he spare the time to find somewhere to take them in; besides, the case will be better if they give statements. They will have to come along, and he doubts either will return for years - if ever.

Eponine breaks for the inn first, running as quickly as her skirts will allow, followed by Cosette.

"And how do you think you're gonna manage us both," Thenardier slurs, "all the way to Paris on your own? Just wait til... til I get my breath..."

Javert's lips twist. "Alone?" he says, and raises his eyes, looking pointedly behind the pair of them. "Jean," he calls. The unicorn's ears twitch in surprise. "Watch them while I get the cart."

"The... the oldest trick in the book," Thenardier mutters, but he looks sufficiently frightened nonetheless.

Retrieving the cart and nag takes a few minutes; when he returns, leading it, there are several bundles in the snow and Cosette is waiting, a blanket around her, as the Thenardiers yell abuse indiscriminately at each other and at her. To Javert's eye, it looks as if the only thing she finds unusual about the situation is the fact that they are still tied up and therefore not following through on any of the copious amount of threats.

He lifts the girl up and settles her in one corner of the driver's bench first, tucking the blanket carefully about her and settling the bundles at her feet - then turning to the much more laborious and thankless task of getting both criminals into the back of the cart and securely bound, face down, to its sides.

Eponine finally emerges from the doorway just as he's gotten them settled (and gagged, having grown quite tired of listening to the racket). In one arm she holds a doll - in the other, the mittened hand of a little boy who looks barely old enough to walk. She struggles to close the door behind herself as Javert watches in surprise, then recovers himself and crosses over. He has never had much to do with children; when he picks the boy up to carry him to the cart, it surprises him how natural it feels, how the child rests against his shoulder. He puts the boy by Cosette, then hands his sister up into the seat as well. There will be, he judges, enough room for him to get in as well, if Eponine keeps her doll in her lap. Just.

Javert picks up the harness and looks between the horse and the unicorn; the horse looks like it might not survive the trip, but he is somewhat reluctant to drive a harnessed unicorn straight into the streets of Paris. Judging by those who have seen through its disguise and those who have not, he suspects its powers have something to do with purity after all - and surely there are innocent people in Paris... if only children. 

So, as Javert has no wish to start a riot, he harnesses the horse to the cart and swings up into the seat. He snaps the reins and, with a tired groan, they roll off - so slowly in comparison to his earlier mad ride that it seems as if they are barely moving.

The little boy quickly falls asleep; Cosette and Eponine, on either side, watch the unicorn as he trots alongside the cart. Javert watches the horse as if it might collapse at any moment and tries to think of what arrangements he can possibly make for them; two girls might have been placed in a convent school, perhaps, but what can he do for an orphaned boy?

As the town grows thicker, the unicorn catches up with the horse and passes it. "Oh!" Cosette says, softly. "Where is Jean going? I thought he would come with us."

"You-" Eponine begins, then slants a wary look at Javert and addresses him instead: "Will we see him again?"

The unicorn curvettes slightly, prancing as if to show off and catch their eyes, and then, stretching out in that bounding unhorselike gait again, dashes off to the north - towards Montreuil. In the satchel at Javert's feet, case #24601 lies in its file, open and unresolved by the justice he has dealt out today. 

Javert turns his eyes back to the road. "Yes," he says. "I think we will see him again."


End file.
